


a kindness

by stillmadaboutpetra



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Animal Death, Character Study, Gen, Graphic Description, Hurt/Comfort, Life lesson, Mercy Killing, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 06:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9806375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillmadaboutpetra/pseuds/stillmadaboutpetra
Summary: It’s just a fucking cat. Dedushka did it before. He didn’t even use a rock. I had to.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a situation i've been in on multiple occasions and i definitely see this as how Yuri would react. it popped into my head and had to write it quickly. People have differently beliefs on the idea of mercy killing. and because i know this is a subject some people dislike, im letting u know ahead of time that yuri mercy kills a cat. It's upsetting for all parties

Clouds cling low and gray, rain in wait. Even Yuri’s toast looks gray. Victor’s drowsily slumped against Yuuri, coffeecup an afterthought in his hand. Yuuri’s not really paying attention to either of them, on his phone, yawning regularly. 

“Why are we getting breakfast,” Yuri asks for the tenth time. He sips his apple juice. It’s tart, about the only bright thing in the world right now.

  
“Victor,” Yuuri mumbles, pinning the blame. Victor slurps from his cup unapolgetically.

The day takes an instantly shittier turn. They’re at a booth of some small diner in a gravel lot, across the street from a chop shop, near a river, off a main road. Yuri’s pretty sure only bums and drunk people come here, but Victor likes trying new places; he just doesn’t research them well enough. At least they know ahead of time that they’re never returning.

From their window, Yuri sees it about to happen before it does, and there’s nothing to be done. It’s just a terrible sensation, like falling in a dream; it won’t hurt him, but it scares him awake. This fucking cat emerges from behind a wayward tire at the shop, and tries to cross the street. Yuri makes a high noise and in his throat, a ‘no’ that never makes it out. Yuuri and Victor look up, looked at him, follow his eyes and see it too.

The cat almost makes it. But it doesn’t. The car doesn’t slow, why would it, and the body sort of pops forward the rest of the way to the other side of the road. Yuri’s running out of the diner before he really processes it, Yuuri behind him. Victor gets waylaid when the waitress yells and he’s stuck paying the tab because she physically grabs him at the door. They probably get dine-n-dash a lot, place like this.

So it’s Yuri and Yuuri and a mangled cat. It’s screaming. It sounds like a baby. Its back legs are almost completely flat. Its stomach has burst open a little, its tail ripped off, a strip of narrow muscle and vertebrae chewed up and hanging.

Yuuri’s stomach heaves. Yuri looks around for all of twenty seconds before he sees a half broken brick. And just like watching that cat knowing it’s going to get hit, he watches Yuri put the brick over the cat’s head, the thing too weak to even resist; Yuri’s big, shiny, leopard print boot lifts, his knee very high, very dark and straight against the slate of the road and the sky and the day, and then his foot comes down with a sound like mud under a hoof. He does it once more to be sure, but there’s no more screaming. 

Yuri’s gasps for air, standing with his hands fisted and shoulders hunched at his ears like he's the struck one; from the side, Yuuri can see his face is red, fat with emotion, mouth hanging apart from his face with its own agony.

“Come away from there,” Victor says from behind them, walking up with a frown. “Yuri.”

He wraps an arm around his Yuuri but doesn’t try to approach the taught-wire that is the veritable boy before them. Blood curls around the rubber sole of Yuri's boot. There’s a small ruin of bright death under his eyes.

He turns, still panting, ragged as if he’s just skated his routine. His eyes are wide under the narrow pincer of his brows. Yuuri starts crying, hand stuffed up against his mouth. Victor’s hand on his hip tightens. 

“It would have suffered even longer,” Yuri argues, as if Yuuri’s tears are an accusation against him. 

Yuuri nods rapidly. “I know I’m just--”

“Neither of you would have done anything!”

“It’s okay, Yuri,” Victor says in his rare, steady voice that reminds them both that he’s a grown man. He beckons with the open palm of his hand flat out like a flag of surrender, crisply white. “Come here now.”

Yuri’s eyes get a little wider, glazed, and he looks away from Yuuri’s splotchy wet face to the bloody cat. His mouth splits wider, hotly pained. “It didn’t deserve to die.”

Then he bursts into tears, coughing with the force of them and all of his body gives up and he slumps, draws tight and starts to shake with crying. He whips his arm across his face, scrubbing his eyes and cheeks and under his nose as snot runs, but it’s a practice in futility, because the mess keeps running. Yuuri pushes out of Victor, who tries to restrain him, thinking about bombs and wires, but Yuuri wraps Yuri in his arms. Yuri doesn’t resist but he doesn’t give in either, standing upright and closed off but he cries into Yuuri’s shoulder when Yuuri forces his head down; it muffles the sound but makes the breathing more desperate. 

This goes on for maybe ten minutes, probably less, but someone else’s crying always seems to last forever. Eventually, Yuri hugs Yuuri, pulling on his clothes and struggling in Russian: It’s just a fucking cat. Dedushka did it before. He didn’t even use a rock. I had to.

  
Victor puts them both in the backseat of his car, allowing Yuri to stomp off to the still wet grass and wipe his boots furiously against the earth; he drives them around for a little, until they’re both tired, and then they all go to Yuri’s grandpa’s house with a cake Victor’s hastily bought. Of course, Grandpa has a cake he’s already made, so they eat that one. It's better without them needing to compare to know. He always seems to have cake. And he tells Yuri that he did the right thing, that sometimes even the best solution is still unfair. And that mercy means you have to be powerful enough to give it. And it’s ugly. 

“It’s not a bad lesson to learn,” Nikolai confides later to Yuuri and Victor after Yuri’s gone upstairs to sleep, to cry quietly and pet his own cat as gently as he can make his touch.

“I don’t think I could ever have done that,” Yuuri whispers, feeling very childish for it. He knows without needing to ask that Victor could and would have done it, but that he would have made Yuuri go back inside the diner first; and would have been crueler for letting the cat suffer that much longer. Yuri is the swiftest of them all. That’s a kind of kindness.   



End file.
